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Roast Leg of Lamb

A roasted leg of lamb served with a brown gravy thickened with browned flour and accompanied by currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Leg of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Roast the lamb

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the leg of lamb in a roasting pan.

  3. Pour boiling water over the leg of lamb.

  4. Roast steadily for 12 minutes per pound, basting often.

  5. Ten minutes before it is done, dredge the lamb with flour.

  6. Baste the lamb with butter to create a brown froth.

  7. Transfer the lamb to a dish and keep it warm.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour the gravy into a bowl set in cold water. Separate the grease from the gravy.

  2. Pour the brown gravy into a saucepan.

  3. Thicken the gravy with browned flour. Season the gravy.

  4. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  5. Serve the gravy in a gravy boat with currant jelly.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Lamb + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lamb + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Lamb + curranttop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Leg of lamb
Is the main cut that is roasted, providing the meat and drippings for the gravy.
Flour
Dredged onto the lamb near the end to form a crust that helps browning.
Butter
Basted over the lamb to add fat that promotes browning and a crisp, brown froth.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy while adding a toasted, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Basting the lamb with butter to create a brown froth. Fat carries heat to the surface and promotes Maillard browning, so the lamb needs regular basting to colour evenly without drying out.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, flour, butter):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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